3GPP Long Term Evolution, LTE, is the fourth-generation mobile communication technologies standard developed within the 3rd Generation Partnership Project, 3GPP, to improve the Universal Mobile Telecommunication System, UMTS, standard to cope with future requirements in terms of improved services such as higher data rates, improved efficiency, and lowered costs. In a typical cellular radio system, wireless devices or terminals also known as mobile stations and/or user equipment units, UEs, communicate via a radio access network, RAN, to one or more core networks. The Universal Terrestrial Radio Access Network, UTRAN, is the radio access network of a UMTS and Evolved UTRAN, E-UTRAN, is the radio access network of an LTE system. In an UTRAN and an E-UTRAN, a User Equipment, UE, is wirelessly connected to a Radio Base Station, RBS, commonly referred to as a NodeB, NB, in UMTS, and as an evolved NodeB, eNB or eNodeB, in LTE. An RBS is a general term for a radio network node capable of transmitting radio signals to a UE and receiving signals transmitted by a UE.
The next generation mobile communication technologies standard developed within the 3GPP is the fifth-generation, 5G, wireless networks. 5G is said to be the enabler for machine to machine, M2M, services and Internet of Things, IoT, with more capacity, lower latency and supporting low power consumption for connected devices.
In a couple of years, 50 billion devices are expected to be connected through wireless networks, hence enabling the 4th industrial revolution or the so called Internet of Things, IoT, era. Only the imagination limits the possibilities and applications within this field, however, some features are likely to be common for a great many of them.
The IoT has been defined in Recommendation ITU-T Y.2060 (June 2012) as a global infrastructure for the information society, enabling advanced services by interconnecting (physical and virtual) things based on existing and evolving interoperable information and communication technologies. Hence, in IoT, devices communicate with other devices. This is also referred to as Machine Type Communication, MTC, or Machine to Machine, M2M, communication. The communication may be achieved using peer-to-peer communication, i.e. Device-to-device, D2D, communication or over radio communication networks. In this type of communication people are less or never involved, instead it is the machines themselves that communicates with each other.
One 3GPP standard that is being formed to address the requirements of IoT is the so called Narrowband IoT, NB-IoT, standard which is a new narrowband radio technology standard within in the scope of the 3GPP LTE evolution. The NB-IoT technology will provide improved indoor coverage, support of massive number of low throughput devices, low delay sensitivity, ultra-low device cost, low device power consumption and optimized network architecture.
Power consumption is one parameter that is vital for the enablement and success of IoT. Ten years' longevity is a timeframe adopted by industry and which requires great resource frugality both in the communications modules as in the sensor or actuator modules of the device. Hence a great deal of work is put into defining communications protocols allowing for extended communications intervals, poor synchronization, low signal amplitudes etc. Consequently, in order for IoT to really break through, longevity is a necessity.
Hence, there is a need for a more efficient way to control the power consumption in IoT devices to prolong the battery lifetime.